Category Archives: WORLD

The cache of 13,000 Ancient Clay Texts Found in Sohag

The cache of 13,000 Ancient Clay Texts Found in Sohag

A German-Egyptian mission at Al-Sheikh Hamad archaeological site in Tel Atribis in Sohag has unearthed a collection of 13,000 ostraca (clay vessel fragments) which bear engraved text in demotic, hieratic, Coptic, Greek and Arabic, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism said on Wednesday.

The cache of 13,000 Ancient Clay Texts Found in Sohag

“This is a very important discovery because it sheds light on the economy and trade in Atribis throughout history.

The text reveals the financial transactions of the area’s inhabitants, who bought and sold provisions such as wheat and bread,” said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the antiquities ministry’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Christian Latis, head of the German mission, explains that archaeologists are now studying the ostraca in order to learn more about the activities of the area’s past inhabitants.

Latis suggests that the text written on the ostraca indicates that the area may have housed a school for teaching demotic, hieratic, hieroglyphic and Greek writing.

Mohamed Abdel-Badia, head of the central department for Upper Egypt, revealed that the mission has also found a collection of ostraca that date back to the Roman or Byzantine eras.

Atribis was one of the ancient towns of the nine nomes of ancient Egypt. It is located on the west bank of the Nile southwest of Sohag city.

Why Did the Vikings Leave Greenland?

Why Did the Vikings Leave Greenland?

The Vikings are remembered as fierce fighters, but even these mighty warriors were no match for climate change. Scientists recently found that ice sheet growth and sea-level rise led to massive coastal flooding that inundated Norse farms and ultimately drove the Vikings out of Greenland in the 15th century.

The Vikings first established a foothold in southern Greenland around A.D. 985 with the arrival of Erik Thorvaldsson, also known as “Erik the Red,” a Norwegian-born explorer who sailed to Greenland after being exiled from Iceland.

Other Viking settlers soon followed, forming communities in Eystribyggð (Eastern Settlement) and Vestribyggð (Western Settlement) that thrived for centuries. (At the time of the Vikings’ arrival, Greenland was already inhabited by people of the Dorset Culture, an Indigenous group that preceded the arrival of the Inuit people in the Arctic, according to the University of California Riverside).

Around the 15th century, signs of Norse habitation in the region vanished from the archaeological record.

Researchers previously suggested that factors such as climate change and economic shifts likely led the Vikings to abandon Greenland.

Now, new findings show that rising seas played a key role, by submerging miles of coastline, according to data presented Wednesday (Dec. 15) at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), held this week in New Orleans and online.

Between the 14th and 19th centuries, Europe and North America experienced a period of significantly cooler temperatures, known as the Little Ice Age.

Ruins of a church in Hvalsey, a Norse settlement in Greenland. Vikings built the structure around the 14th century.

Under these chilly conditions, the Greenland Ice Sheet — a vast blanket of ice covering most of Greenland — would have become even bigger, Marisa Julia Borreggine, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, said in a presentation at the AGU conference. 

As the ice sheet advanced, its increasing heaviness weighed down the substrate underneath, making coastal areas more prone to flooding, Borreggine said.

At the same time, the increased gravitational attraction between the expanding ice sheet and large masses of sea ice pushed more seawater over Greenland’s coast.

These two processes could have driven widespread flooding along the coastline — “exactly where the Vikings were settled,” Borreggine said. 

The scientists tested their hypothesis by modeling estimated ice growth in southwestern Greenland over the 400-year period of Norse occupation and adding those calculations to a model showing sea-level rise during that time. Then, they analyzed maps of known Viking sites to see how their findings lined up with archaeological evidence marking the end of a Viking presence in Greenland. 

Their models showed that from about 1000 to 1400, rising seas around Greenland would have flooded Viking settlements by as much as 16 feet (5 meters), affecting about 54 square miles (140 square kilometers) of coastal land, Borreggine said.

This flooding would have submerged land that the Vikings used for farming and as grazing pastures for their cattle, according to the models.

However, sea-level rise was probably not the only reason the Vikings left Greenland.

Other types of challenges can cause even long-standing communities to collapse, and a perfect storm of external pressures — such as climate change, social unrest and resource depletion — may have spurred the Vikings to abandon their settlements for good, Borreggine said. 

“A combination of climate and environmental change, the shifting resource landscape, the flux of supply and demand of exclusive products for the foreign market, and interactions with Inuit in the North all could have contributed to this out-migration,” she said. “Likely a combination of these factors led to the Norse migration out of Greenland and further west.”

Unique Medieval Vessel Restored in Scotland

Unique Medieval Vessel Restored in Scotland

When the Galloway hoard was unearthed from a ploughed field in western Scotland in 2014, it offered the richest collection of Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland. But one of the artefacts paled in comparison with treasures such as a gold bird-shaped pin and a silver-gilt vessel because it was within a pouch that was mangled and misshapen after almost 1,000 years in the ground.

Now that pouch has been removed and its contents restored, revealing an extraordinary Roman rock crystal jar wrapped in exquisite layers of gold thread by the finest medieval craftsman in the late eighth or early ninth century. About 5cm high, it may once have held a perfume or other prized potion used to anoint kings, or in religious ceremonies. It had been carefully wrapped in a silk-lined leather pouch, reflecting its significance.

The hoard, which included about 100 objects, was buried around AD900 and contained artefacts from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Ireland and as far away as Asia. It was unearthed by a metal detectorist on what is now Church of Scotland land in Kirkcudbrightshire.

The rock crystal jar was part of the Galloway hoard, unearthed in Kirkcudbrightshire in 2014.

After a fundraising campaign to raise £2m, it was acquired by National Museums Scotland in 2017.

Dr Martin Goldberg, NMS’s principal curator of early medieval and Viking collections, described the jar as “really beautiful” and all the more exceptional because his research has led him to conclude that the rock crystal carving was in fact, Roman. It was perhaps 600 years old by the time it was transformed into a gold-wrapped jar.

He said: “So it’s a really surprising and unique object.”

Dr Leslie Webster, former keeper of Britain, prehistory and Europe at the British Museum, said: “Rock crystal is unusual in itself. It … was greatly prized in the antique world for its transparency and translucency, and so it’s associated with purity. So it was, I think even in its time, very, very special.

“I’ve seen a lot of Anglo-Saxon finds over the years in my professional career, some of them amazing. But this absolutely knocks them all into a cocked hat.”

The base of the rock crystal jar.

The restoration has revealed an unexpected Latin inscription on the jar’s base. Spelt out in gold letters, it translates as “Bishop Hyguald had me made”. This is crucial evidence that some of the hoard’s material may have come from a church in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, which included Dumfries and Galloway and stretched as far north as Edinburgh and as far south as Sheffield.

At the start of the 10th century, Alfred the Great was pushing back the Danes, laying the foundations of medieval England and Alba, the kingdom that became medieval Scotland. It is unclear whether the hoard was buried by a Viking – Norse sagas refer to riches being buried to be accessed in the afterlife – or someone fearing Viking raids at a time when ecclesiastical treasures were being robbed from monasteries.

Goldberg said that silk was then a particularly luxurious and exotic material: “It’s come from Asia, so it’s travelled thousands of miles. It’s an example of how precious they thought this object inside was,” he said.

Although Bishop Hyguald may have been a prominent figure in Northumbrian ecclesiastical circles, church chronicles of the period are incomplete, partly because of the Viking invasions.

Goldberg expressed excitement at finding the name. “So much of the past is anonymous, especially when you’re looking at very early history,” he said. “There are very few names to work with. But this is adding new information, building a much richer picture.”

The rock crystal design resembles the capital of a Corinthian column, with carved lobes that look like foliage, he realised. “It’s almost a perfect model of a Corinthian column, but the scale is minute,” he said.

There is the possibility that this jar still bears trace elements of the potion it once held and that its precise chemicals can be revealed.

Goldberg said: “The type of liquid that we would expect would be something very exotic, perhaps a perfume from the Orient, something’s that’s travelled in the same way that the silk has. There were certain types of exotic oil that were used in anointing kings and ecclesiastical ceremonies.”

Ninety-seven of the hoard’s artefacts are included in a touring exhibition, titled The Galloway hoard: Viking-age treasure. It is at Kirkcudbright Galleries, near the site of its discovery, until 10 July, transferring to Aberdeen Art Gallery from 30 July to 23 October. The jar is undergoing final work but, from Monday, a new film and digital model will be featured.

The oldest Buddhist apsidal temple of the country found in Swat

Oldest Buddhist apsidal temple of country found in Swat

A team of Pakistani and Italian archaeologists have found a 2300-year-old Apsidal temple of the Buddhist period and a treasure in the Bazira city of Barikot tehsil, Swat district in Pakistan.

The location of these artefacts is in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Know more about the discovery below. 

Take a look at the helicopter view of the site found

A senior official said, “The Pakistani and Italian archaeologists during joint excavations at a historic site have discovered over 2,300 years old Apsidal temple of the Buddhist period in north-west Pakistan besides recovering other precious artefacts.

Oldest Buddhist apsidal temple of country found in Swat

The temple discovered in Swat is even older than the Temples discovered in Taxila remains of Pakistan.”

Professor Luca said, “This is an astonishingly important discovery as it attests to a new architectural shape of Buddhist structure in Gandhara.

We only have one other example of the apsidal temple in a city at Sirkap, Taxila. However, the apsidal temple of Bazira is so far the earliest example of this architecture in Pakistan.” 

As per the archaeologists, the temple is almost 2300 years old and along with that 2700 other Buddhist period coins, rings, pots and other artefacts worth millions have been recovered. 

An interesting discovery is of something written in the Kharosthi language of the King of Greece, Menander

What is the Inference derived from the discovery?

The head of the Italian archaeological mission in Pakistan Dr Luca Maria Oliver informed that this discovery of the Temple of the Buddhist period is approving of the fact that Swat is home to the oldest archaeological remains than Taxila.

There are many more recoveries expected from this zone of Brazira city. Dr Abdus Samad, the director of museum and archaeology, said, “Bazira city in Barikot Swat is older than Taxila remains too.”

The discovery also proves that Swat had been a sacred place for six to seven religions.

Dr Samad has informed the media that there were 14 archaeological sites under section 4 where the excavation process was carried out.

The Italian ambassador to Pakistan Andreas Ferrarese informed the media, “The Italian archaeological mission in collaboration with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa archaeological department has been protecting and excavating archaeological sites for the last seventy years in Pakistan.”

The site was discovered by archaeologists of Ca’ Foscari University and the Italian Archaeological Mission in collaboration with the provincial department of archaeology and museums.

As per Prof Luca M Olivieri who is the director of Italian Mission, “it is possible to date the foundation of the Buddhist sacred structure to the Mauryan period, certainly to the 3rd century BC.”

The MINI terracotta army: Hundreds of small warrior statues found in a 2100-year-old pit in China

The MINI terracotta army: Hundreds of small warrior statues found in 2100-year-old pit in China

Inside a 2,100-year-old pit in China, archaeologists have discovered a miniature army of sorts: carefully arranged chariots and mini statues of cavalry, watchtowers, infantry and musicians.

They look like a miniaturized version of the Terracotta Army — a collection of chariots and life-size sculptures of soldiers, horses, entertainers and civil officials — that was constructed for Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.

Based on the design of the newfound artefacts, archaeologists believe that the pit was created about 2,100 years ago, or about a century after the construction of the Terracotta Army.

The southern part of the pit is filled with formations of cavalry and chariots, along with models of watchtowers that stand 55 inches (140 centimetres) high. At the pit’s centre, about 300 infantrymen stand alert in a square formation, while the northern part of the pit has a model of a theatrical pavilion holding small sculptures of musicians.

“The form and scale of the pit suggest that it accompanies a large burial site,” wrote archaeologists in a paper published recently in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.

The MINI terracotta army: Hundreds of small warrior statues found in 2100-year-old pit in China
A 2,100-year-old pit containing a mini “Terracotta Army” has been discovered in China.

The “vehicles, cavalry and infantry in square formation were reserved for burials of the monarchs or meritorious officials or princes,” the archaeologists wrote.

The soldiers and cavalry in the newly discovered army are much smaller than those in the Terracotta Army. Based on the date, size and location of the pit, archaeologists believe that this newly discovered army may have been built for Liu Hong, a prince of Qi (a part of China), who was the son of Emperor Wu (reign 141–87 B.C.).

Hong was based in Linzi, a Chinese city near the newly discovered pit; he died in 110 B.C. “Textual sources record that Liu Hong was installed as the prince of Qi when he was quite young, and he, unfortunately, died early, without an heir,” archaeologists wrote in the journal article. Shortly before Hong’s death, according to writings by ancient historian Ban Gu, a comet appeared in the sky over China.

Where is the tomb?

If the pit and its ceramic army were meant to protect Liu Hong, or another senior royal family member, in the afterlife, then a tomb should be located nearby, the archaeologists wrote.

“There are possibly architectural remains or a path leading from the pit, but there is no way to explore the main burial chamber,” the researchers wrote, noting that the tomb itself may have been destroyed. 

Older residents in the area have reported descriptions of a prominent earthen mound, some 13 feet (4 meters) high, near the pit, the study authors wrote. “Sometime in the 1960s or 1970s, workers removed the earth and flattened the area in order to widen the Jiaonan-Jinan Railway.”

The reports are corroborated by an aerial photograph taken in 1938 by the Japanese Air Force (at that time, Japan was at war with China). This picture shows a possible burial mound near the railway, the archaeologists noted.

From life size to mini-warriors

The Terracotta Army pits found beside the tomb of the first emperor of China are the only known examples of an army of life-size ceramic soldiers in China.

Shortly after the first emperor’s 210 B.C. death, his dynasty, known as the Qin dynasty, collapsed and a new dynasty, known as the Han, took over China. 

Some of the Han dynasty rulers continued to build pits with armies of ceramic soldiers for their burials, but the soldiers were considerably smaller. For instance, the infantry sculptures in the newly discovered pit are between 9 and 12 inches (22 and 31 cm) tall, nowhere near the heights of the life-size soldiers buried near the tomb of the first emperor.

The pit, along with several other archaeological sites, was discovered in the winter of 2007 during construction work. After its discovery, the pit was excavated by the Cultural Relics Agency of Linzi District of Zibo city.

After excavation was complete, archaeologists from this agency analyzed the artefacts, working with researchers from the Shandong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

A report on the pit was first published, in Chinese, in 2016, in the journal Wenwu. This report was recently translated into English and published in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.

Could cosmic rays unlock the secret tomb of China’s Qin Shi Huang guarded by terracotta warriors?

Could cosmic rays unlock the secret tomb of China’s Qin Shi Huang guarded by terracotta warriors?

Cosmic rays may be used to scan the sealed tomb of China’s First Emperor — long rumoured to contain deadly traps and an ancient map with liquid mercury rivers. Buried under a 249-feet-high pyramidal mound, the tomb lies within a necropolis in Xi’an’s Lintong District and is famously guarded by the Terracotta Army.

Found in their thousands to the tomb’s east, as if to protect Qin Shi Huang in death from the eastern states he conquered in life, each statue was once brightly painted. However, exposure to the dry Xi’an air before appropriate conservation techniques had been devised meant that most of the soldiers’ colours faded after recovery.

For this reason, Chinese officials have long been reluctant to allow the tomb itself to be unearthed until they can guarantee the preservation of any artefacts within. However, new proposals would see subatomic particle detectors placed beneath the 2,229-year-old tomb to map out the structure’s layout in three dimensions.

Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BCE) succeeded in conquering and unifying the whole of China in 221 BCE, creating an empire that lasted for some two millennia.

His other achievements including starting construction on the Great Wall of China, establishing a nationwide road network and standardising writing and units. 

His lavish burial site was unearthed in 1974 and has inspired both films and video games, including instalments in both The Mummy and Indiana Jones franchises.

Cosmic rays may be used to scan the sealed tomb of China’s First Emperor — long rumoured to contain deadly traps and an ancient map with liquid mercury rivers
Buried under a 249-feet-high pyramidal mound (pictured), the tomb lies at the heart of a necropolis in Xi’an’s Lintong District, one famously guarded by the Terracotta Army
Found in their thousands to the tomb’s east, as if to protect Qin Shi Huang in death from the eastern states he conquered in life, each statue was once brightly painted. However, exposure to the dry Xi’an air before appropriate conservation techniques had been devised meant that most of the soldiers’ colours faded after recovery — as seen in the examples pictured
For this reason, Chinese officials have been reluctant to allow the tomb itself to be unearthed until they can guarantee the preservation of any artefacts within. Pictured: a map of the necropolis complex, which was modelled after the Qin capital Xianyang. The tomb mound can be seen in the centre of the image, with the inner and outer walls. The Terracotta Army was buried in a ‘garrison’ to the east, between the Emperor and the states he conquered
When high-energy cosmic rays (white line) from space interact with Earth’s atmosphere, they create a shower of subatomic particles — including some called ‘muons’ (solid orange lines) which form from the rapid decay of pions (solid yellow lines)

When high-energy cosmic rays from space interact with Earth’s atmosphere, they create a shower of subatomic particles, including some called ‘muons’. 

The scanning technique — ‘muon tomography’ — works as an X-ray, with detectors measuring the rate at which muons are absorbed by the material they pass through.

Just as bones absorb relatively more X-rays than flesh to create contrast in a radiograph, so does stone and metal block the passage of more muons.

The same approach has previously been used, in 2017, to reveal the presence of a previously hidden, 98-feet-long chamber within the Great Pyramid at Giza.

The muon-scanning technique has been proposed by physicist Yuanyuan Liu of the Beijing Normal University and her colleagues, who normally use cosmic rays to investigate the dark matter at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, which is the world’s deepest cosmic ray facility which is buried some 3.7 miles under the Sichuan province.

‘As an ancient civilisation with a long history, China has a large number of cultural relics that are in need of archaeological research,’ the team told the Times.

‘For the non-intrusive detection of the internal structure of some large artefacts such as imperial tombs, the traditional geophysical methods used in archaeology have certain limitations.

‘The application of muon absorption imaging to the archaeological field can be an important supplement to traditional geophysical methods,’ they concluded. 

To put their proposal to the test, the group used existing archaeological and historical data on the mausoleum to build models of the tomb complex.

They then buried these in the ground on top of two muon detectors to show that they could indeed images the chambers in their models.

‘Preliminary imaging results prove the feasibility of muon absorption imaging for the underground chamber of the mausoleum of the First Qin emperor,’ the team said. 

The feasibility studies were funded by the central Chinese government.

Based on their tests, the team have concluded that — to scan the real-life tomb — at least two muon detectors, each of which is about the size of a washing machine, would need to be placed in different locations within 328 feet (100 metres) of the tomb’s surface.

This is not the first time that archaeologists and other scientists have tried to use non-invasive methods to map out the inside of Qin’s tomb. Unfortunately, most approaches have limitations that make them difficult to apply to the mausoleum’s particular circumstances.

Gravity anomaly detectors are good at detecting changes in density underground — but such are easily affected by environmental disturbances and their range is limited to a small area.

Pictured: Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BCE), who succeeded in conquering and unifying the whole of China in 221 BCE, creating an empire that lasted for some two millennia

Ground-penetrating radar, meanwhile — a favourite of archaeological geophysicists — suffers from a too limited depth to be of much use here. 

These studies have succeeded in revealing, however, that an underground complex of some kind and state of preservation does extend some 98 feet beneath the pyramidal mound. Archaeologists believe that there is a good chance that the subterranean chambers may still be intact. Certainly, no evidence has been found that graverobbers have ever succeeded in tunnelling their way into the tomb.

Geophysicist Yang Dikun of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen — who was not involved in the present study — told the South China Morning Post that the latest proposal to scan the Emperor’s tomb was feasible.

‘The muon detectors that we build and use for fieldwork nowadays have become so small they can be carried around by a child,’ he commented.

However, Dr Yang warned, the cosmic ray approach is not without potential challenges — the main one being that the detectors have to be physically emplaced underneath the mausoleum complex without damaging it or the artefacts within.

It also required considerable patience, he added. Unlike other imaging techniques, muon tomography is far from instantaneous, and the detectors will need to operate until they have racked up enough particle counts for meaningful analysis.

In fact, simulations by Dr Liu and her team have suggested that — to produce a clear image of the tomb’s structure — the detectors would need to be left in place for at least one year. The full findings of the study were published in the journal Acta Physica Sinica.

British or Irish reached the remote Faroe Islands before Vikings

British or Irish reached remote Faroe Islands before Vikings

People from Britain or Ireland may have reached the remote Faroe Islands before the Vikings, according to new evidence. Historically, the North Atlantic archipelago was part of the Viking world and its inhabitants speak a language derived from Old Norse.

British or Irish reached remote Faroe Islands before Vikings
The rugged Faroe Islands were settled by 500AD, hundreds of years before the earliest known Viking arrival

Now, evidence has emerged that people reached the island by 500 AD – some 350 years before Scandinavians arrived. This early settlement pre-dates the adoption of long-distance sailing technology by the Vikings.

Researchers found fragments of sheep DNA and chemical residues of sheep faeces in lake sediments on the Faroese island of Eysturoy. These were assigned an age using scientific dating techniques. Livestock could only have reached the remote archipelago if they were taken there by humans on boats.

“You see the sheep DNA and the biomarkers start all at once. It’s like an off-on switch,” said Dr William D’Andrea, from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) at Columbia University in New York.

Lead author Lorelei Curtin, who worked on the research while she was a graduate student at LDEO, said the findings were the “nail in the coffin” for the idea that the islands were uninhabited until the 800s.

The scientists say these new results provide “unequivocal” evidence of a human presence before the Vikings arrived in the 9th Century AD. Furthermore, several indirect lines of evidence suggest an earlier occupation of the Faroes by Celtic-speaking people from Britain, Ireland or both.

Dr D’Andrea told BBC News: “We still really don’t know who the people were and why they chose to go to the Faroe Islands. But there are lots of pieces of information that lead us to believe it is very likely there was a population of people from the British Isles.”

Important archaeology probably lies underneath existing settlements such as the capital Torshavn

These other clues include ancient but undated, Celtic grave markers that dot the islands, Celtic place names, historical accounts and DNA evidence from people living on the islands – which are located about halfway between Norway and Iceland.

According to Medieval texts, the early Irish navigator St Brendan set out across the Atlantic with comrades from 512 to 530, and supposedly found a land dubbed the Isle of the Blessed. Later, in 825 AD, the Irish monk Dicuil wrote that some northern islands had been settled by hermits for at least 100 years.

Many have speculated that these accounts refer to the Faroes, but there is no conclusive proof. And there are controversies over other lines of evidence.

Some scholars argue that Celtic place names needn’t be a sign of pre-Norse settlers. Instead, they submit, there was already extensive contact between the Vikings and populations in Britain and Ireland by the 9th Century AD – so Celtic speakers could have travelled with the Norse on their boats.

DNA evidence shows that people who live on the islands today derive most of their paternal ancestry from Scandinavians, but most of their maternal ancestry comes from British or Irish people. This pattern, of Celtic women having children with Scandinavian males, is seen in Iceland too and has previously been interpreted as a hallmark of Vikings transporting non-native women on their voyages.

But it’s also consistent with a scenario where the islands were populated when the Norse arrived, and the authors point out that the proportion of British or Irish ancestry is much higher in the Faroes than in Iceland.

Despite the incredible achievements of Norse mariners, it’s thought the sail was adopted in Scandinavia between 750 and 820 AD – late compared with other parts of Europe. This makes it unlikely that they could have reached the Faroes by the early 6th Century.

Dr D’Andrea and his colleagues had originally set out to better understand the climate at the time that the Vikings arrived on the Faroes. They had been using a boat to extract sediment cores from a lake near the village of Eiði, the site of an ancient Viking locale on Eysturoy.

Starting at 51cm (20ins) down in the sediments, they detected the sudden arrival of livestock, most likely sometime between 492 and 512, but possibly as early as 370.

A layer of ash deposited from a known Icelandic volcano eruption in 877 helped them reliably date the sediment sequences below. Another team of researchers had previously found barley grains on the Faroese island of Sandoy, dating to between 300 and 500 years before the Norse period.

Kevin Edwards, from the University of Aberdeen, who was a co-author of the barley paper, said the new study “has produced convincing and exciting evidence” of earlier occupation.

He added: “Is similar evidence to be found in Iceland, where similar arguments are made for a pre-Norse presence, and for which tantalisingly similar archaeological, pollen-analytical and human DNA are forthcoming?”

The research was funded by the US National Science Foundation and involved researchers from LDEO, the College of William & Mary, the University of California, Santa Cruz, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the University of Bergen in Norway.

Researchers confirm: The Largest Pyramid in Mexico has been found

Researchers confirm: The Largest Pyramid in Mexico has been found

Researchers in Mexico have discovered an immense pyramid, even larger than Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun. It’s 75 meters in height and was explored by specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History. It is located in the acropolis of Tonina, Chiapas and is likely around 1,700 years old.

Researchers confirm: The Largest Pyramid in Mexico has been found

The director of the archaeological zone, Emiliano Gallaga, says that the work, done over the course of two years, verified that the northeastern portion of the site was, indeed, the largest pyramid in Mexico. It is comparable to pyramids found in Tikal and El Mirador of the Mayan civilization.

One unique feature is the seven platforms that serve as palaces, temples, housing, and what were essentially administrating offices. This unique structure functioned within the social, religious, and political-cultural structure.

“It’s a big surprise to see that the pyramid was done almost entirely by pre-Hispanic architects and therefore is more artificial than natural,” says Gallagas. “This is because it was believed that the entire structure was a natural hill, but recent evidence has revealed that the structure was almost entirely built by ancient inhabitants.”  Archaeologists noted that the pyramid was much larger than they expected it to be. The structure has roads running through it as well.

The temple-pyramid complex was built in four stages, starting from the 3rd century BC through the 9th century AD, and was dedicated to the deity Quetzalcoatl. It has a base of 450 by 450 metres (1,480 by 1,480 ft) and a height of 66 m (217 ft).

According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is in fact the largest pyramid as well as the largest monument ever constructed anywhere in the world, with a total volume estimated at over 4.45 million cubic metres, even larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, which is about 2.5 million cubic metres.

However the Great Pyramid of Giza is higher at 138.8 metres (455 ft). The ceramics of Cholula were closely linked to those of Teotihuacan, and both sites appeared to decline simultaneously. The Postclassic Aztecs believed that Xelhua built the Great Pyramid of Cholula.

At its peak, Cholula had the second largest population in Mexico of an estimated 100,000 people living at this site. Although the prehispanic city of Cholula continued to be inhabited, the Great Pyramid was abandoned in the 8th century at a time when the city suffered a drastic drop in population.

Even after this drop-off in population, the Great Pyramid retained its religious importance. The site was once called Acholollan (in Nahuatl) meaning place of flight.

This meaning has led some to believe that this site was founded after its original inhabitants fled (from?) elsewhere. According to myth, the pyramid was built by a giant named Xelhua of adobe bricks, after he escaped a flood in the neighboring Valley of Mexico. 

The pyramid consists of six superimposed structures, one for each ethnic group that dominated it. However, only three have been studied in any depth.

The pyramid itself is just a small part of the greater archaeological zone of Cholula, which is estimated at 154 hectares (0.59 sq mi).

The building of the pyramid began in the Preclassic Period and overtime was built over six times to its final dimensions of 450 metres on each side at the base and 66 metres tall. This base is four times the size of that of Pharaoh Khufu’s Great Pyramid of Gizaand is the largest pyramid base in the Americas.

The earliest construction phase features talud-tablero architecture that is characteristic of the region, and that became strongly associated with the great metropolis of Teotihuacan. Some of the pyramid constructions have had burials, with skeletons found in various positions, with many offerings, especially ceramics.

The last state of construction has stairs on the west side leading to a temple on top, which faced Iztaccíhuatl. During the colonial period, the pyramid was severely damaged on its north side in order to build the Camino Real to Puebla. The west was damaged later with the installation of a rail line.